Better History Extension Known to be Hijacking Chrome Browser with Ads

Have you ever been in a situation when your browser or its extensions have behaved weirdly? Getting redirected to promotional websites fetching ads and offers? If you are using Better History and specifically its version 3.9.8, you need to be cautious. It has been reported of leading to vulnerabilities and known to be tracking data. This is quite surprising as the browser extension was supposed to and was known for adding extra features to filter out Google Chrome’s web history section of the users. This gave the convenience to users for viewing the pages that have been visited in near past. However the updated version of Better History (3.9.8 version) was known to prompt for an additional permission for “Read and Change all data of the website visited.”

Not only this, there have been discrepancies reported where users are being redirected to other promotional webpages showing lots of ads and banners. These redirects were through linkr.us services which are believed to be guided by adware and Potentially Unwanted Program (PUP) making the webpages go gaga with advertisements. This can all be associated for generating monetary benefits by causing clicks. Earlier version of Better History extension was actually quite popular among the Chrome users. There was no such issues as it offered clear instructions for adding extra filters on Chrome’s web browser history section.

There have been reports that the actual owner of Better History 3.9.8 might have sold it to some third party Unknown Company couple of months ago since the launch of 3.9.5 version. As a matter of fact, it might be a possible reason for browser to be getting redirected to other promotional web pages. It can be due to the new owner who might be the ‘culprit’ behind all these activities and leading to malicious activities. This has made other latest versions of Chrome extensions vulnerable that are widely used regularly viz. Currency Converter, Hide My Adblocker, 4chan Plus and Web Timer.

With so much anguish among the Chrome users regarding weird behavior of Better History 3.9.8, it has been rightly taken off from Google Chrome Store by by Google. Moreover, other extensions and their latest versions are also under scanner and being monitored closely. Since the privacy of the users are prime concern and rightly so it should be. If you are facing similar issues, better report this at once.